This chapter critically examines how Artificial Intelligence (AI) is rhetorically framed as a sustainable development “solution,” often without accounting for the extractive material and environmental costs of AI infrastructures. Drawing from rhetorical analysis and strategic communication theory, and contextualized by Mark Fisher’s concept of capitalist realism, the chapter interrogates the language and messaging strategies used by governments, development agencies, and tech corporations to promote AI as a key enabler of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). It argues that the dominant discourse of “AI for Good” frequently relies on technocratic optimism and moral imperatives that obscure the ecological contradictions at the heart of AI deployment. Using case studies such as Microsoft’s AI for Earth, Google’s AI for Climate Action, and UN-led digital development campaigns, the chapter identifies discursive patterns including solutionism, selective transparency, and strategic omission. These campaigns often highlight AI’s potential to improve energy efficiency or monitor environmental change, while downplaying or ignoring the carbon-intensive training of large language models, the global labor and mineral extraction required for AI infrastructure, and the uneven geographies of environmental harm. This rhetorical framing risks legitimizing extractive digital development under the banner of sustainability and forecloses alternative imaginaries rooted in climate justice and digital equity. The chapter proposes a framework for more ethically grounded communication practices that foreground the material impacts of AI and resist the allure of technosolutionism. It calls for communication strategies that are transparent, participatory, and attentive to power—particularly in Global South contexts where AI-driven development often replicates existing asymmetries. Ultimately, this chapter asks: What futures are being imagined—and whose are being marginalized—when AI is framed as our primary path to sustainability? And how might strategic communication reorient the narrative toward a more just and ecologically honest vision of digital development?